A community post published on dev.to gathers twenty Nikto command-line invocations into a single reference, describing what each flag does and when the author says it is useful. Nikto is presented in the post as an open-source web server scanner written in Perl and built on LibWhisker2, which runs checks against servers for dangerous files, outdated software and misconfigurations. The author frames the piece as the third entry in a series on practical tooling, and the content is a walkthrough of options rather than an announcement of a new version, feature or benchmark.
The post draws a scope line that matters for anyone deciding which tool to reach for. According to the author, Nikto concentrates on server-level reconnaissance and known dangerous paths, and does not crawl application logic the way application scanners such as Wapiti do. The listed capabilities include SSL support, proxies, host authentication and attack encoding. That description positions the tool as a first-pass check of what a server exposes, not a substitute for testing how an application behaves once a user is logged in.
For a scan aimed at one host, the post describes the simplest invocation: the -h flag receives a target host or URL, and every default plugin runs. According to the author, dangerous files, CGI scripts, outdated server versions and common misconfigurations are probed automatically in such a scan. A non-standard port is targeted by a second command that adds the -p flag; 80 is noted as the default, while 8080, 8443 or custom ports are where many production applications listen, and a comma-separated list can supply multiple ports.
For encrypted targets the post describes the -ssl flag, which forces Nikto to connect over SSL/TLS. The author states this is required for HTTPS targets, particularly those using self-signed certificates that would otherwise cause connection failures, and that the flag tells Nikto to ignore certificate errors and continue. A related command scans several common web ports on one host in a single run by listing them after -p, which the author presents as more efficient than separate scans.
Reporting options get two entries. The -o flag names an output file while -Format selects the format; the author recommends HTML when findings need to be shared with stakeholders who want a readable summary with severity ratings and descriptions, and JSON when results must be parsed programmatically or fed into CI/CD pipelines, dashboards or vulnerability management platforms. The post does not include sample output from either format, so the described structure of those reports is not demonstrated in the source.
Further flags deal with scale and access. When the argument is not a URL or IP address, -h also takes a file listing hosts, the author says, and the post calls this essential for assessments covering dozens or hundreds of targets in one run. HTTP Basic authentication credentials, in username:password form, are supplied by the -id flag; the author notes that many applications require these before administrative interfaces or sensitive content become reachable. Traffic can be routed through an HTTP proxy such as Burp Suite or OWASP ZAP with the -useproxy flag, so requests can be inspected, modified and logged in real time.
With -useragent, a custom User-Agent can be set. Default scanner User-Agents are blocked or served different content by some applications, the author explains, and spoofing a browser string can help get past basic filtering. Rather than a guarantee, this is presented as a practical workaround; no evidence is offered in the post about how often such filtering is encountered or how reliably the substitution succeeds.
The tuning section is the most detailed part of the post. The -Tuning flag filters which categories of tests run, and the author maps single characters to test types: 1 for interesting files, 2 for misconfiguration, 3 for information disclosure, 4 for injection, 5 for remote file retrieval, 6 for denial of service, 7 for server-wide file retrieval, 8 for command execution, 9 for SQL injection, 0 for file upload, a for authentication bypass and b for software identification. One example runs only categories 3 and 4, which the author says helps focus on particular vulnerability classes or shorten scans on large targets.
Reverse tuning is documented with an x prefix. In the author's example, -Tuning x6 runs everything except the denial-of-service category, which the post frames as a way to keep broad coverage while excluding tests that could be disruptive. That framing is the author's own guidance; the source does not describe how disruptive those tests are in practice or under what conditions they should be avoided.
Two entries cover evasion. The -evasion flag applies LibWhisker IDS evasion techniques, and the author lists eight numbered options: random URI encoding, directory self-reference, premature URL ending, a prepended long random string, a fake parameter, a TAB used as a request spacer, changed URL case and the Windows directory separator. Multiple techniques can be layered by listing their numbers together, which the author says makes detection by intrusion detection and prevention systems harder. No testing of detection rates is reported.
Plugin control is covered by three commands. The -list-plugins flag prints available plugins and exits without scanning, which the author says helps in understanding the scope of available tests and in building precise selections. The -Plugins flag then selects which plugins run, accepting a comma-separated list with the special entries ALL (the default) and NONE. A separate command uses -Cgidirs to control which CGI directories are tested, with special values none to skip CGI testing and all to test every known CGI directory, or specific paths supplied directly.
Two operational flags round out the list. The -maxtime flag caps testing time per host, expressed in hours, minutes or seconds, which the author says prevents scans from stalling on slow or unresponsive targets. The -update flag refreshes plugins and databases from cirt.net, and the author recommends running it before critical scans so the latest checks for newly discovered dangerous files and server vulnerabilities are present.
For freelancers and developers who run their own server checks, the practical value here is the mapping between a goal and a flag: narrowing scope with tuning, capping runtime, capturing machine-readable output for a pipeline, or routing traffic through a proxy to see exactly what is being sent. The post is a reference for constructing commands, and the author's stated reasons for each option are the main guide to choosing among them.
The limits are worth stating plainly. This is a community post, so every description of flag behavior is the author's claim rather than an independently verified fact, and the source contains no version number, release date, changelog or measured results. Nothing in the supplied material indicates that any of the twenty commands was run against a live target for this article, and no findings, timings or false-positive rates are reported. Readers should treat the tuning and evasion descriptions as documentation-style summaries to confirm against Nikto's own help output before relying on them.
The post closes by pointing readers to the author's GitHub repository of hacking tools and a link collection for further security content. Those links are promotional and are not corroboration of anything described in the command list. The article is best read as a consolidated cheat sheet for an established scanner, useful for building a command quickly, but not as evidence of new capability or of how any particular server will respond.